Kingston HyperX MAX USB 3.0 128GB External SSD Review

Kingston HyperX MAX 3.0 Internals

Kingston HyperX MAX 3.0 Internals

Opening the clamshell-like aluminum case was a matter of removing the rubber feet which covered the four screws that secure the two halves.

A slight prying was required due to the small but sticky thermal pad used in the center of the PCB. Note the aforementioned sticker signifying the 128GB model.

Also a little tricky was removing the PCB as there lies a much larger thermal pad underneath which helps stick it into place. Each pad should add a measure of physical shock protection as well.

On the NAND, you can see exactly where the pad resides as the chip coloring changes and the etched part numbers no longer have their colored highlights. As such, getting a detailed picture was a little more difficult than normal but here you can easily see the Toshiba branded TH58NVG7D7FBAK2 MLC NAND which is almost exactly what we found in the Kingston V+100 SSD.

The controller is a model T6UG1XBG, which again was found on the Kingston V+100 SSD drive and it sits adjacent to the Micron 128MB DDR DRAM cache to buffer the data. While this controller supports TRIM, the OS cannot pass it to the drive for execution through the USB 3.0 interface.

The USB 3.0 interface is derived from a daughterboard connected directly to the standard SATA connectors.

On board is a tiny Genesys Logic GL3310 SATA to USB 3.0 bridge controller that does all of the work with a 25 MHz clock source.